> What if you're FedEx'ing a home movie of your child's birth (including states of undress of the mother) to your mother-in-law who couldn't be there?
Yeah, unless they can teach the dogs to smell the difference between a bootleg DVD and other kinds, all they're doing is setting themselves up for a big pile of lawsuits.
OTOH, our who-gives-a-flying-f*ck-about-the-citizens-anymore government will probably make it legal for them to snoop "in the interests of national security", or else the MPAA will just work a secret deal with FedEx where they open and re-seal your packages, in the naive hope that no one will ever find out it's going on.
> Using a GUI also takes less learning and less mental effort.
It depends on what you do. If you only do one thing with your computer, all you need is a power switch. If you're a power user you probably find a command line more effective than a GUI. On those rare occasions that I use Windows I'm often annoyed by having to click through a dozen menus, tabs, and pop-ups to reach something that I can get within half a second by typing a few characters on my shell command line.
Also, most CLIs are Turing complete. I can do amazing things by typing a complex instruction at the command line and walking away from it.
The academic community has developed an intense interest in games beyond board games as a platform for AI research over the past few years. There are a couple of dedicated conferences (AIIDE,CIG) and special sessions at others (e.g., CEC).
DARPA was briefly interested in funding that kind of stuff a couple of years back, but someone suddenly decided not to go there. Academics are betting that they'll be back due to the obvious utility in training tools, as well as basic AI research.
> The ESA should have learned from NASA, and gone with the strategy that has brought such success to the Space Shuttle program: Keep all spacecraft and instruments on the ground on earth, where if something bad happens like a mirror getting out of place, a technician can easily fix it.
Yes, the moon missions would never have been possible if they hadn't kept everything on the ground in Arizona.
> Container ships don't have to move cargo from one part of the ship to another, on a regular basis. You load it up, sail off, and then unload at the other end of the journey. If the stuff in the bow had to be transported to the stern every twelve hours, you'd probably find fewer enormous steel bulkheads between them, and more wide doors.
Yeah, you got to be careful with analogies.
When it comes to security, imagine aliens trying to take over your ship. The bulkheads might be useful for constricting them to one area, but what's absolutely essential is to make sure you can't operate the security doors from within each section. Otherwise the invaders just open them and spread at will.
My point being that partitioning priviledged code into little chunks doesn't help anything; if you break in to one you've got the whole system. But it is useful to limit the amount of priviledged code to the minimum possible, and not mix in code that doesn't really need to be privileged. That way if the aliens break in, it's less likely to be in a compartment that has controls for the security bulkheads.
I have patented a reverse remote control, so their system can be used to lock the shackles on your armchair to keep you from going to the kitchen or bathroom during the commercials.
> Wait I bet you have. You are educated and smart and look down on anyone who would try and believe the Bible.
No, I don't have a bone to pick with people who don't know any better. It's people who offer foolish arguments to justify ignoring the facts who I have little patience with.
> Let me ask you then to prove that none of the Bible can be convincingly demonstrated to to be written before the event.
Why is the ball in my court? You're the one asking us to believe that the ordinary operations of nature have been violated.
> There are many prophecies in the Old Testament regarding Jesus, His coming, His crucifixion etc. Are you willing to concede that the Old Testament was written before the New Testament? If so, then your quoted statement is incorrect!
No one doubts that the OT was written before the NT. What's in question is whether the things described in the NT actually happened, and if so, whether the purported prophecies in the OT actually referred to them.
> Oh, and if you wonder what prophecies: Here are some:
1: He would be born of a virgin (Isaiah 7:14; Matthew 1:23) 2: He would live in Nazareth of Galilee (Isaiah 9:1-2; Matthew 2:22-23, 4:15) 3: He would occasion the massacre of Bethlehems children (Jeremiah 31:15; Matthew 2:16-18) 4: His mission would unexpectedly include the Gentiles (Isiah 42:1-3,6; Matthew 12:18-21), and he would unexpectedly be rejected by the Jews, His own people (Psalm 118:22; 1 Peter 2:7)
It's well known that Matthew quote-mined the OT and took passages out of context to spin them as prophecies. You should learn to read the OT for what it actually says, rather than reciting it as a mantra for your own religion's propaganda machine.
If you want to believe it, that's fine with me. But don't fool yourself into thinking there is actually any evidence for it.
> Historian Dr. John Montgomery wrote, and I quote: "Modern archeological research has confirmed again and again the reliability of New Testament geography, chronology, and general history"
Strangely enough, the geography, chronology, and general history of The Da Vinci Code are also reliable, but only an idiot would take the whole thing seriously. The Iliad has also provided a few surprises about geography, demographics, and political entities in the Bronze Age, but no one concludes from that that the Olympians really existed and did all the things attributed to them.
> Then, in the Old Testament we not only find (*gasp* he isnt...) prophecy that is also Historically accurate!
There is not a single prophecy in the bible that can be convincingly demonstrated to be both written before the event and interpreted unambiguously. Post hoc interpretation is just too easy, and too exempt from validation. Look at the whole New Age industry of writing books about Nostradamus' purported prophecies.
Well livejournal does need to pay for their bandwidth and running costs right?
With ad blockers getting more and more prevalent and sometimes getting installed by default with some firewall software, it might get problematic for websites depending on ad revenue.
Although I guess peopl installing ad blockers on their own, probably would just ignore the ads anyway.
Yeah, when I'm watching TV I always go pee during the love scene or the chase scene, so I won't miss the commercials.
> Perhaps this discovery gives credence to the accuracy of the Bible.
More likely the famous Genesis story incorporates a folk explanation for why some snakes have vestigal traces of walking apparatus.
If you step back and look at it, most of Genesis consists of stories explaining why things are (and ought to be!) the way they are. It's a very common motif in mythologies and legendary histories from all over the world.
The yarn about breeding sheep in front of striped staves to produce striped sheep, and the thrice-repeated "that's not my wife, that's...uhm... my sister" meme (one guy fell for it twice!) should be all the hints you need that the book isn't a useful guide to biology or history.
> One huge difference is that the Microsoft tech support guys are paid to listen to your stupidities.
Yep. In internet forums some Linuxers will tell you to RTFM, and some Windowsers will tell you they don't consult for free. I don't see a heck of a lot of difference in the net effect.
I think it would be fun to put together a list of the cultural references you have to 'get' in order to understand most of the jokes on Slashdot. RD would of course be way down on the list compared to Star Wars, Star Trek, D&D, and Linux, but it would make for an interesting list.
> I'm assuming most programmers are in my position... they know what the problems are, but have to come up with the solution, the method, the architecture, and the implementation themselves.
Hence my comment about how immature our profession is.
Slashdot Mirror
I kinda liked Dr. Goodhead.
> What if you're FedEx'ing a home movie of your child's birth (including states of undress of the mother) to your mother-in-law who couldn't be there?
e government will probably make it legal for them to snoop "in the interests of national security", or else the MPAA will just work a secret deal with FedEx where they open and re-seal your packages, in the naive hope that no one will ever find out it's going on.
Yeah, unless they can teach the dogs to smell the difference between a bootleg DVD and other kinds, all they're doing is setting themselves up for a big pile of lawsuits.
OTOH, our who-gives-a-flying-f*ck-about-the-citizens-anymor
> Using a GUI also takes less learning and less mental effort.
It depends on what you do. If you only do one thing with your computer, all you need is a power switch. If you're a power user you probably find a command line more effective than a GUI. On those rare occasions that I use Windows I'm often annoyed by having to click through a dozen menus, tabs, and pop-ups to reach something that I can get within half a second by typing a few characters on my shell command line.
Also, most CLIs are Turing complete. I can do amazing things by typing a complex instruction at the command line and walking away from it.
> I'd like to see you select the correct jpeg out of a directory of 500 without an icon preview.
There are plenty of applications you can use to browse your pjorn. You don't need something that poops all over your desktop.
The only thing I've ever bothered to learn about Nautilus is how to disable it after every upgrade.
of Shoot the Messenger.
That seems to be the only solution businesses and politicians can come up with for their self-caused problems anymore.
I see they're still stuck on the strange idea that speed is the proper metric for determining who's the best programmer.
The academic community has developed an intense interest in games beyond board games as a platform for AI research over the past few years. There are a couple of dedicated conferences (AIIDE,CIG) and special sessions at others (e.g., CEC).
DARPA was briefly interested in funding that kind of stuff a couple of years back, but someone suddenly decided not to go there. Academics are betting that they'll be back due to the obvious utility in training tools, as well as basic AI research.
> Seriously; is anybody thinking that the US will consider any other aspect but "protectionism"?
Depends on whether the alcohol importers' lobbyists have more money than the domestic alcohol producers' lobbists.
> The ESA should have learned from NASA, and gone with the strategy that has brought such success to the Space Shuttle program: Keep all spacecraft and instruments on the ground on earth, where if something bad happens like a mirror getting out of place, a technician can easily fix it.
Yes, the moon missions would never have been possible if they hadn't kept everything on the ground in Arizona.
> Container ships don't have to move cargo from one part of the ship to another, on a regular basis. You load it up, sail off, and then unload at the other end of the journey. If the stuff in the bow had to be transported to the stern every twelve hours, you'd probably find fewer enormous steel bulkheads between them, and more wide doors.
Yeah, you got to be careful with analogies.
When it comes to security, imagine aliens trying to take over your ship. The bulkheads might be useful for constricting them to one area, but what's absolutely essential is to make sure you can't operate the security doors from within each section. Otherwise the invaders just open them and spread at will.
My point being that partitioning priviledged code into little chunks doesn't help anything; if you break in to one you've got the whole system. But it is useful to limit the amount of priviledged code to the minimum possible, and not mix in code that doesn't really need to be privileged. That way if the aliens break in, it's less likely to be in a compartment that has controls for the security bulkheads.
We've never had an unbreakable DRM. Will we really have an undernet that can't be spied on?
Is that a new Star Trek character?
I have patented a reverse remote control, so their system can be used to lock the shackles on your armchair to keep you from going to the kitchen or bathroom during the commercials.
No, I don't have a bone to pick with people who don't know any better. It's people who offer foolish arguments to justify ignoring the facts who I have little patience with.
> Let me ask you then to prove that none of the Bible can be convincingly demonstrated to to be written before the event.
Why is the ball in my court? You're the one asking us to believe that the ordinary operations of nature have been violated.
> There are many prophecies in the Old Testament regarding Jesus, His coming, His crucifixion etc. Are you willing to concede that the Old Testament was written before the New Testament? If so, then your quoted statement is incorrect!
No one doubts that the OT was written before the NT. What's in question is whether the things described in the NT actually happened, and if so, whether the purported prophecies in the OT actually referred to them.
> Oh, and if you wonder what prophecies: Here are some:
It's well known that Matthew quote-mined the OT and took passages out of context to spin them as prophecies. You should learn to read the OT for what it actually says, rather than reciting it as a mantra for your own religion's propaganda machine.
If you want to believe it, that's fine with me. But don't fool yourself into thinking there is actually any evidence for it.
> Historian Dr. John Montgomery wrote, and I quote: "Modern archeological research has confirmed again and again the reliability of New Testament geography, chronology, and general history"
Strangely enough, the geography, chronology, and general history of The Da Vinci Code are also reliable, but only an idiot would take the whole thing seriously. The Iliad has also provided a few surprises about geography, demographics, and political entities in the Bronze Age, but no one concludes from that that the Olympians really existed and did all the things attributed to them.
> Then, in the Old Testament we not only find (*gasp* he isnt...) prophecy that is also Historically accurate!
There is not a single prophecy in the bible that can be convincingly demonstrated to be both written before the event and interpreted unambiguously. Post hoc interpretation is just too easy, and too exempt from validation. Look at the whole New Age industry of writing books about Nostradamus' purported prophecies.
> Perhaps this discovery gives credence to the accuracy of the Bible.
...uhm... my sister" meme (one guy fell for it twice!) should be all the hints you need that the book isn't a useful guide to biology or history.
More likely the famous Genesis story incorporates a folk explanation for why some snakes have vestigal traces of walking apparatus.
If you step back and look at it, most of Genesis consists of stories explaining why things are (and ought to be!) the way they are. It's a very common motif in mythologies and legendary histories from all over the world.
The yarn about breeding sheep in front of striped staves to produce striped sheep, and the thrice-repeated "that's not my wife, that's
> One huge difference is that the Microsoft tech support guys are paid to listen to your stupidities.
Yep. In internet forums some Linuxers will tell you to RTFM, and some Windowsers will tell you they don't consult for free. I don't see a heck of a lot of difference in the net effect.
> I don't do any tech support in any manor
I do some consulting at the Luthor manor now and then.
"Intelligence seems to be one of the few things the military doesn't overpay for - one Afghan spying on al Qaeda gets $15 for every successful mission."
> err, Red Dwarf. Whoops. See how long it's been?
I think it would be fun to put together a list of the cultural references you have to 'get' in order to understand most of the jokes on Slashdot. RD would of course be way down on the list compared to Star Wars, Star Trek, D&D, and Linux, but it would make for an interesting list.
> I'm assuming most programmers are in my position... they know what the problems are, but have to come up with the solution, the method, the architecture, and the implementation themselves.
Hence my comment about how immature our profession is.
The inverse of division is multiplication, so cell division is its own inverse.
*Kryten's head explodes*
Oooh, creepy. You could reverse the split that gives identical twins and get a freak with two souls!